Improvements to a laser-induced fluorescence instrument for measuring SO2 – impact on accuracy and precision

Abstract

Abstract. This work describes improvements made to the in-situ laser induced fluorescence SO2 instrument as originally described in Rollins et al. (2016). We report measurements of the SO2 fluorescence emission spectrum. These measurements allow for the determination of the most appropriate bandpass filters to optimize the fluorescence signal while reducing the instrumental background. Because many aromatic species fluoresce in the same spectral region as SO2, fluorescence spectra were also measured for naphthalene and anisole to determine if ambient SO2 measurements may be biased in the presence of such species. In addition, the 216.9\u2009nm laser linewidth was decreased in order to increase the online/offline signal ratio which in-turn increases the precision of the measurement. The effects of these improvements on the instrumental sensitivity were determined by analyzing the signal and background of the instrument using varying optical bandpass filter ranges and cell pressures and calculating the resulting limit of detection. As a result, we report an improvement to the instrumental sensitivity by as much as 50\u2009%.